Republicans unveil Latino outreach plans
On Wednesday, the RNC announced the hiring of Bettina Inclan as the party’s Latino outreach director. (Flickr)
By JORDAN FABIAN
Channel: Politics
The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Wednesday laid out its blueprint for winning over Latino voters who have shunned the party in recent years, centering its message around reviving the economy and pointing out President Obama’s “broken promises.”
In a conference call with reporters, RNC chairman Reince Priebus announced the hiring of veteran political operative Bettina Inclan as the party’s Latino outreach director. Inclan said she would go to work building a community engagement effort with local Latino leaders and a get-out-the-vote operation to register Latinos as Republican ahead of the 2012 elections in key swing states like Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and North Carolina (all of which Obama won in 2008). The party will also use social media tools like Twitter and Tumblr to reach out to Latinos in English and Spanish.
Priebus acknowledged the party has had trouble with Latinos in recent years - Obama won two-thirds of the Latino vote in 2008 - but said that the election of Latino Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has given the party hope that it can rebound with Latinos.
“I think our party, in the past, hasn’t done the best job in the world in communicating the successes we have had in the Hispanic community,” said Priebus. “But we have so much to be proud of.”
The moves signal that Republicans believe they have a real opening with Latino voters in the 2012 elections, due to the fact that Latino support for Obama has dropped precipitously since his 2008 election as a result of factors such as the 11-percent Latino unemployment rate and the lack of progress on immigration reform.
“The president sold them a bill of goods, he didn’t follow through on anything,” Priebus said of Obama’s promises to Latinos. “His record isn’t very good.”
While party officials sounded optimistic they could win over enough Latinos to take back the White House, they refused to set expectations of what percentage of the vote they would win (though a strategy memo that said it could be less than 50 percent) and revealing how much money or manpower is being invested.
“It’s not just meeting percentage goals in a sterile environment, certainly we need enough to win,” Preibus said. “I look at this as a long-term, generational effort from the RNC that will take this initiative seriously, not just for this election but for the future.”
That effort could be a daunting task for the RNC.
Despite their success in getting Latino Republicans elected to key offices, dozens of opinion polls conducted over the past year have shown that the GOP brand is tarnished with Latinos and that the party’s standard bearers are on the opposite side of the majority of Latinos on the immigration issue. Obama’s campaign also has a large Latino outreach infrastructure on the ground in key states like New Mexico and Colorado.
A Pew Hispanic Center poll released in December showed that Latino voters still strongly identify as Democrats: 67 percent identify or lean toward the Democratic Party compared to 20 percent who say the same about the Republican Party. In addition, 45 percent say that Democrats have more concern for Latinos, compared to 12 percent who say Republicans do.
Democrats have frequently pointed out that Mitt Romney, the front runner for the GOP nomination, has positioned himself as the toughest candidate on illegal immigration in the field, which could turn off Latinos. For example, Romney has said he would veto the DREAM Act, which is backed by about 85 percent of Latino voters, according to Pew.
Republicans, however, expressed confidence that economic downturn would loom large enough in the minds of Latino voters
“Immigration is important, we need to address it. We need to talk about it. But the number one issue is the economy,” Inclan said.
